Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Dot's Sick & Bob's patience is tested... what to do?Check Me Out On These Fine Sites:KiraKennedyHNR.tumblr.comtwitter.com/KiraKennedyHNRfacebook.com/pages/KiraKennedy/1519743548240112All media used is done so under Fair Use(Also, here's that vlog I was talking about in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLut5fJhBH8)

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Once again doing a big catch up list. Here is my 8-Bit version of Seikima's Stainless Night, my first try at a Let's Play of Sanctum, the first couple episodes of The First Templar, Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, my first impressions on EvilQuest, and my first Watches episode in almost a year.

Friday, November 14, 2014

From the makers of animated successes/cash cows, Frozen and Wreck It Ralph, comes Disney’s first dive into their recently acquired bin of Comic Book IP, Marvel's Big Hero 6. The movie is the story about a cocky child prodigy named Hiro Yamada, played by Ryan Potter, learning to cope with Disney’s continued streak of Family Murder, as his brother Tadashi is killed during a freak fire at the university Hiro planned to attend. Now shut down emotionally Hiro spends his time in a deep depression, until he accidentally activates his brother’s invention, a personal healthcare robot/walking marshmallow named Baymax played by Scott Adsit. Alongside Baymax, Hiro discovers that a masked super villain started the fire and stole one of Hiro’s inventions, miniature microbots, and is now using them to tear up San Fransokyo. Wishing to avenge his brother’s death and capture this masked foe, Hiro upgrades Baymax and four of Tadashi’s fun but weird classmates, Gogo, Honey, Wasabi and Fred, and transforms them into the super high tech and awesome superheroes. Now seeing as Big Hero 6 was based off the comic book of the same name, first things first, does it resemble the comic at all?

No. Thankfully it seems this is a reimagining of sorts, so no outside context is required to understand the movie. It’s just a story of a little brother’s depression and how one overcomes grief. The best part of the movie’s story is with the brotherly relationship between Hiro, Tadashi and oddly Baymax. Disney just seems to have a real understanding of sibling connections. Like with Lilo and Nami, Elsa and Anna and now Hiro and Tadashi, all these connections feel natural to watch and enjoy. And after the guaranteed tragedy this brotherly motif gives us a more subdued story of grief from Hiro, wanting to bottle up his sadness rather than express anything. But his brother's protector role transfers to his huggable invention Baymax, and the two continue the quasi-brother motif from then on. The best moment of Baymax and Hiro relationship is a shot of Baymax and Hiro watching the sunset as the sunlight silhouettes them. If you really look for the similarities you’ll notice the rapid growth of their connection isn’t just emotional but subtly physical which was a nice touch.

But hell you could’ve not had the scene in there and Baymax would have still sold the movie for me. Everyone in that theater I watched Big Hero 6 in with loved Baymax. Every innocent gesture, every clumsy mistake and every heartfelt pillowy soft word that came out of him invoked a grand reaction from the audience and its hard to not notice why. Design wise, like the movie states, he has a cute non-threatening look to him that makes him very naturally appealing with a big soft body and cute little eyes, and his very basic personality connects well with people on a very base level. In fact the whole relationship of Baymax and Hiro reminds me of another robot and kid combo movie I saw a while back. Can you guess which one?

Yep, The Iron Giant. In fact Big Hero 6 would what I call the Brother’s version of The Iron Giant, with its similar focus on familial and surrogate familial connections. Big Hero 6 however has one advantage over Iron Giant. It’s a Marvel Action movie so, it takes full advantage of Disney’s CG Animation department to its fullest extent, giving us some super creative fight scenes and the visual treats of seeing more “practical” super powers from the 6. The world of Big Hero immerses itself with technology that is practically used right now, the biggest example being 3D printing. The inclusion of this technology makes the world a lot more practical to view, not realistic obviously, I'll wait until I see a giant marshmallow robot flying around the city until I say that.

But what I can say is that Big Hero 6 has a fantastic grasp of animation and movement. With each of the Heroes' varied modes of motion the camera movement matches perfectly to give us the most action packed and fluent shots making every action scene a visual treat to watch. The animation itself is also very colourful and the design itself is like if you mixed the bright colours of The Incredibles and mixed it with the proportions of The Iron Giant, creating a style that's both familiar and intriguing.

But with all these positives and fun inclusions, are there any cons to this movie? Well the only con I should warn about are the side characters, Tadashi’s four university friends. They… are total stereotypes. Badass chick, the dude, the quirky girl with glasses, and the hyperactive black guy. They each fit into these stereotypical archetypes perfectly. However Big Hero 6 has two things that make these stereotypical roles barable and even a lot of fun to watch. A) Their interactions with Hiro aren’t being used to solely feul their stereotypes. Their interactions work in tandem with the themes of overcoming grief which gives each of these stereotypes a human edge to them adding some slight dimension. B) The actors who play these four, Jamie Chung, T.J. Miller, Génesis Rodríguez, and Damon Wayans, Jr., just pull off these stereotypes so well. It’s like Gus from Psych. You know how stupidly stereotypical these characters are but they’re just so good at it you don’t care either way. My favourite out of this stupidly stereotypical squad is definitely GoGo for one scene during the climax. No spoilers, but her moment just put the cherry on the total bad girl sundae of her performance. So, if you’re into these sort of stereotypical characters then enjoy, if you don’t then this maybe will be a deal breaker.

Oh yeah, don’t worry if you get sad in this movie from the dozens of scenes depicting some really soul crushing stuff. This movie is a cashcow waiting to produce some money flow. Even in the credits it was already advertising that the 3DS game was already out. So this isn’t the last time we’ll be seeing Big Hero 6, if it continues making such strong box office returns. So, what do I think overall? Big Hero 6 is a super fun movie. Despite what I mentioned about its theming, it ain’t deep by any stretch of the term. However it understands the message it wants to convey and knows how to do it in a concise and fun way with fantastic flowing action, great characters and some sublime animation. So, if you want a movie experience much in the lane as The Iron Giant, but with more punching, then check out Big Hero 6.

URGENT PS. If you do watch this movie and like it STAY UNTIL AFTER THE CREDITS. You will not be disappointed.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Now what’s the best method to convey how much of a soulless, committee designed borefest The Book of Life was? Let’s start off with how the movie starts. We open with a bunch of rascally kids in modern day being told the story of The Book of Life by a sassy tour guide. Right there. This was when my enthusiasm for this movie started to die. Thus the tour guide narrates/sickeningly exposits about the tale of three childhood friends, the kind hearted musician Manolo, the meatheaded and self absorbed Joaquin and the no-nonsense independent girl Maria as they become embroiled in a bet between two gods. The kind and benevolent god of the land of the remembered La Catrina, and the conniving lord of the land of the forgotten Xibala. They bet on who will win the love of Maria, Joaquin or Manolo. A time skip ensues with Manolo becoming a bullfighter/musician and Joaquin joining the army. Now as Maria returns to town after being sent away to learn how to read, do fencing, kung-fu and to certainly be able to build a rocketship out of toothpicks to make her more impressive, the boys start a battle of affection to win Maria’s heart.

Oh, was there something wrong with my summary of the lead-in premise? Oh right for those who’ve seen the well-done trailer for book of life you might remember the scene where Manolo is bitten by a snake and sent to the Land of the Remembered. Good for you. Now how long do you think it took this movie to get to the land of the remembered? Well I can’t say specifics but I’ll tell you what it felt like, a freaking eternity. The Book of Life’s critical failure as a story is that it will not stop explaining, thus making everything drag on and on. Explaining what the Book of Life is, explaining Jaoquin’s barely there backstory, explaining the villains motivations, explaining day of the dead, Manolo’s family history, the land of the remembered, explaining how Manolo feels guilty for not killing bulls, just explaining, explaining and more explaining.

I can easily understand why the writers, Jorge Gutierrez and Douglas Langdale, decided to go this route, writing a brand new fantasy story is a very tricky thing. All because of one fact, if your audience doesn’t get what you’re trying to say your story will fail. So, especially for children’s fantasy movies, there’s an urge in screenwriters to explain their movie thoroughly from a modern perspective to get everybody on the same page and hopefully connect with their audience. But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that 100% of the time. In most cases people and kids enjoy the mystery of figuring out the world on their own, not through blunt exposition but woven in context and dialogue that creates a rock solid subtext to the narrative.

But this time around they took the easy way out and modernize The Book of Life and the result is catastrophic to the story. Because so much of the movie is just explaining, not to mention because the editing is so lightning fast, we can barely spend 2 minutes to develop anything before boop other subplot/comic relief/modern slang comes rolling in. It creates an emotional disconnect from the story, characters and set pieces making everything a slog to sit through.

The worst examples of modernization can be boiled down to four main offenders. 1. The museum narrator is entirely unnecessary. If they cut those scenes out completely and we just opened on the three kids and the bet between Xibala and La Catrina the pacing would have improved dramatically and the movie would be better for it.

2. Ice Cube as the sage character the Candle Maker. I went to the theater with two of my friends and we all noticed that once Ice Cube's character The Candlemaker made his grand debut on screen, popping and locking it and spouting some of the most blatant modernizations, that theatre was dead quiet. The Candlemaker or more accurate Ice Cube wasn’t playing a character at that point. He was just a catch phrase spewing, brotha’ product. You know what I’m sick of? Wacky sage characters. Yeah they can be funny, but recently this trope is just used a crutch to try and make that characters’ exposition dump bearable to listen to. Why can’t we just have a wise old character exposit? Like Nicodemus from Secret of NIMH or Yoda from Star Wars. A being of maturity to lead our main characters to make a their critical decisions in their stories. Well I guess it wouldn’t be wacky enough if we did things like that.

3. We have the same fake product feeling with our damsel Maria. While her boy toys, Manolo and Joaquin, were both completely generic and one note, Maria wasn’t even that. She’s the boring stereotypical anything girl. Do you need a girl character to show that girls can do anything men can do while also showing they can be simply be captured insultingly easy and pushed aside like a piece of meat? Then get an anything girl. They can do anything especially be overdone. Having a character be amazingly talent for their own benefit is one thing, but Maria’s talents are directly rooted to her trying to one-up guys, and while this could be great characterization what we get are just clunky jabs saying “See! Girls can be just as great as guys.” The most idiotic of which is when she utters "I learnt kung-fu." It’s almost insulting to think girls are supposed to buy this fake commercial crap.

And finally offender #4, for a movie that obviously spent a LOT of moolah on its animation, I find it really funny how the majority of the songs are either crappy pop music or horrible covers. I’m sorry if I felt maybe some original songs with influences from the Mexican culture would help make this movie stand out. I guess I’m just not the type of guy who likes to listen too obviously crowbarred in songs from the Top 100 hits list. If there was an original song hiding amongst the covers I don’t think even people who would like this movie would notice as they all sound the same.

It’s a shame that book of Life has all these problems because I do think it also has some interesting ideas and jawdropping visuals. The animation was done by Reel FX, you know the guys behind Free Birds, the time travelling Turkey movie with Owen Wilson, while there track record on choosing good movies could use some work the Book of Life is a true Mexican fiesta of visuals. Bright colors, detailed and inventive models and textures, the visuals are clearly the most gripping and innovative facet of this movie. And with our director being an EX-Character Designer we also have flash drawn segments in El Tigre style, which was very impressive, but the CGI in comparison makes it look like crap.

And to be 100% fair I didn’t think every character was awful, I particularly liked La Catrina and Xibala, played respectively by Kate del Castillo and Ron Perlman. They both bring a flare of passion and seriousness to their performances that creates an intriguing rivalry and romance between the two giving us some actually funny lines unlike Candle Cube. It really hurts saying this because I was looking forward to Book of Life and with Boxtrolls preceding it, it could’ve been a Halloween tag team for kids to remember. But it’s just too artificial in emotion to make me feel anything but boredom towards it with only the animation, La Catrina and Xibala keeping me awake. If you still want to see it, see it as a lesson, a lesson for movies to improve and to see the beautiful work by Reel FX. That’s the reason why it’s doing well so far but personally I could never recommend this soulless movie to anyone.

Here is a collection of Smite games I've played since last time, also fair warning I'll be doing another post with how far I've gotten in my solo let's play Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Also my big project is almost done, filming and second unitish stuff is done, and it's all up to editing now. Till then, enjoy!

Monday, September 29, 2014

So ahead of time. I know it's been a while since I last posted. I'm really in the middle of a lot of things right now. I've got a new show I'm getting the first episode of together for the first time. Trying to keep the other shows going, and the Podcast is back in full blast this last month, so a lot to take in all at once. Can't wait to show you guys how the new show is going, but that will have to wait. First of all is updating the video game content, the 8-Bit music project I finally finished, and reintroducing An Unearthly Podcast.

For now this seems to be the end of the Border Lands Let's play, so watch and enjoy.

Also since last time I managed to try out another Free to Play game that went new to Steam with updates.

Recently I finally pushed and finished my 8-Bit version of the entire album of Dark Side of the Moon that I've dubbed 8-Bit Side of the Moon. The full album is below, or you can see the parts in the play list here. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYk_GSdVpp1ct3q9uO0mOjByvovd7GVp

And finally An Unearthly Podcast. Bill, Ran-San and myself have been hosting this show for over Two Years now, and I think it's hit the point that we can advertise it a bit more again. So here are the episodes on the new season so far!

Friday, July 18, 2014

Hey everybody… you remember that hour and a half long video series where I listed off my top 20 favorite and influential animated TV Shows? Well… I missed one… technically, and that one is Gosho Aoyama’s murder mystery series Detective Conan. Another widely recognized and popular anime, that I originally saw during its English dub run in 2003 under the name Case Closed. It had everything; awkward voice acting, and Americanization that made dialogue and storylines conflict with the original intention of the Japanese context. It was a perfect dub. But let’s move on from my sarcastic writing and talk about my screw-up. While it’s true Case Closed was an awkward Dub the original Detective Conan is in my opinion one of the best murder mystery shows out there, with an intriguing root premise and a well full of intricate cases that our little detective and by extension us have to solve. But before we discuss the mysteries this show offers let’s talk about the premise.

Detective Conan stars high school detective Kudo Shinichi who, after investigating an underhanded deal in an amusement park, gets attacked by two mysterious members of The Black Organization and is forced to ingest an experimental poison developed by them in hopes to kill him. But due to a side effect of the poison Kudo doesn’t die but his body shrinks to that of a child. Later, neighbor and family friend Professor Agasa helps Kudo dawn a disguise, encouraging him to hide his identity to protect his family and friends from the organization.

So Kudou takes the name Conan Edogawa and goes to live with his childhood friend Ran Mouri and her father, Kogoro, hoping to use Kogoro's detective agency as a way to find the people who shrank him but… truthfully it never really does help, it just lands Kudo with a dead body each episode. With the body of a kid and the brain of brilliant high school detective Kudo Shinichi becomes grade school detective Edogawa Conan and solves crimes to one day take down The Black Organization.

Now with a series that is plus 800 episodes by the writing of this spotlight this is a very meaty series. I could spend a Cartoon Corner length discussing all the various plot lines, and character interactions but for this spotlight I’ll just boil it down to my major points. Firstly Detective Conan over the last years has amassed a huge roster of characters with fully realized personalities behind them, with each character having a specific archetype to them, the bumbling detective, the tubby kid, the high society ego, all those good one’s. At first glance the characters feel like they’d tumble into that boring stereotype category, that kills so many shows but much like the Simpsons, however Detective Conan’s characters use their laid out archetype as a foundation to their characters allowing those times when they step out of their usual archetypes to be all the more memorably funny, or character defining.

The show does this best with The Detective Boys and Conan. I made it clear before that I despise looking down or being condescending to kids, it’s almost like an emotional trigger now for me. Throughout this show though, we still have Conan and the Detective Boys being looked down upon by most of the adults, keeping the status quo on how most of society treats them, but with every case that lands in their laps they manage to decipher the evidence and close every case. It even becomes apparent in the later seasons that the Detective Boys become increasingly less reliant of Kudo to solve each case. Of course it is always Kudo who finally discovers the answers but the boys are able to show that even though they are kids they can still be just as useful as any adult if given the chance. This creates one of the shows main thematic through lines and also leads me to always thinking whenever I see a Detective Boys’ centric episode “Can’t they just rub their victory in the adults’ faces for once?”

The next key character relation is the romance between Kudo Shinichi and his childhood friend Ran Kogoro. For those who love romance plots I think this will be your cup of tea. Kudo and Ran have some great chemistry with one another, showing scenes from the emotionally heartfelt, to the comedic over the top. It’s a fun romance to watch and it does feel they have a true connection. But what happens when we add the tragedy of Kudo having to hide his identity as Conan from Ran. This deception shows a whole new layer of their relationship, showing the frustrations, and the pain of a long distance relationship and the irony that Kudo literally is always beside her. Showing not only Kudo’s rock solid dedication to destroying the Black Organization, and protecting his loved one;s but the abnormal amount of trust, understanding, and patience that Ran holds for KudoAll of this creates a couple that is both fun to watch at their best and intriguing to watch at their worst.

And with that I could simply segway into the show’s biggest problem BUT let’s talk about the main bulk of Detective Conan its mysteries. The mysteries have two basic formats, the one episode mystery, and the two-part set up and deduction show. Both of these formats run like clockwork, setup, meet the suspects, crime, investigation, and then deduction. It almost always goes by that format, except from the odd one or two episodes and it works very well. The mystery writing itself is also very brilliant, interlacing logical clues to the mystery in the set up as well as the investigation portion so that the audience can solve the case along with Conan. Although Detective Conan isn’t kind to the international audience.

Obviously because its based in Japan a lot of the mysteries have their mysteries also rooted in Japanese lore. The show does take the time to provide some context but without almost even more extensive context, some of the answers to the mysteries will be lost on the audience and that’s not counting when the mysteries answer is so overcomplicated that it’s impossible to deduce. That just kills the fun of the mystery.

But with all that said, let’s circle back to my first point and ask “If I like Detective Conan so much why isn’t it on my Top 20?” What was the reason that kicked it off the list entirely? At the time I thought it was because after you watch an episode of Detective Conan you lose the rewatch value in it, as you already know the answer to the mystery so it would be logical to think that. But after re-watching the episodes again, it made me rethink that reasoning because I still enjoyed the episodes very much even on a second viewing. So if it wasn’t a lack of re-watch ability what kicked Detective Conan off the list?

I then tied marathoning a few episodes and that’s when the answer came flooding back to me. It’s the fact that Detective Conan is trying to have an episodic serial narrative, and really dropping the ball on paying off the serial elements. Let me explain what I mean by episodic and serial. Episodic shows are like Spongebob, or The Simpsons, shows that have self contained stories in each episode with very few to no narrative connection between the episodes. Serial shows are the exact opposite, like Avatar, or Detentionaire it’s a show narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end, with each episode leading into one another. However Detective Conan is a hybrid the two styles, it has the unconnected mystery of the week as well as having a deep intertwining linear narrative about Kudo facing these men in black. And other shows have done this style of narrative and succeeded to varying degrees, Cybersix had a similar episodic serial format, but with the sheer volume of episodes Detective Conan has, for those who like the serial narrative of Kudo vs. The Men in Black you start to feel the show is just spinning its wheels. Out of all the +700 episodes it feels like a mere handful has anything to do with that key narrative and for me that became quite irritating to me and just wishing the show will get to the bloody point already.

But even though Detective Conan didn’t make it on the Top 20 List I want to stress that Detective Conan isn’t a bad show. It’s a fantastic murder mystery series with intriguing and complex mysteries, involving and enjoyable character interactions and a love sub plot that is actually cute to watch. Other than a misbalance in its serial and episodic episodes Detective Conan has become one of my favorite mystery shows and if you like murder mysteries then only one truth can prevail, that you need to watch this show.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

I think this is one of the best sudden creations that came to me this week. Was thinking of doing something else yesterday but it didn't work out. So instead I give you 8-Bit Doctor Who - I am the Doctor

It’s that time of year once again folks. Time for the Summer Blockbusters. They’re bigger, more epic, and hopefully better then any other movie in the year and being an animation guy I find it’s always cool to see an animated movie get just as much publicity as any of the super cereal action movies. But saying How To Train Your Dragon 2 had some publicity would be a vast understatement. The sequel to Dreamwork’s 2010 How to Train Your Dragon has been hyped to the max and in traditional Dreamworks fashion if one IP did well then you need to pump an unhealthy amount of sequels out of it until it withers and dies.

That may sound like I’m already revealing my hand in this poker game of critique but stick with me. To give my basic thoughts on the original, I absolutely loved it. I loved the focused and surprisingly mature story of the struggle between father and son. I loved the relationship between main character Hiccup and his dragon Toothless. I loved the animation, conveying what Dreamworks convey best, motion and speed. And I even liked how the writers actually permanently wounded Hiccup by having him lose his foot at the end of the last movie, showing both a mature conclusion as well as adding a clever mirror effect between Hiccup and Toothless’s injuries.

How To Train Your Dragon was definitely one of the best films of 2008 and ever since the trailer I’ve been hyped for How To Train Your Dragon 2. How was the sequel? How to Train Your Dragon 2 is exactly like it was advertised. Bigger, and more epic, making it a kick ass movie that I’d recommend to anyone. But even after watching it and taking a few days to digest the film I still can’t distinguish whether I like the sequel or the original better.

*Note: I haven’t read any of the books that how To Train Your Dragon is based off of and I’m looking at these movies as self-contained movies*

On a tiny little island in the middle of nowhere sites the little Viking island of Berk and in the 5 years since the last movie Berk has become dragon central, everyone owning dragons and living in harmony with them. But a great shift in power is coming as Stoick (Gerard Butler) is planning on retiring as chief and appointing Hiccup. But Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) now older, wiser and with a cool dragon glider suit doesn't want to be chief, in fact he has no idea what he wants to be, but experiments by trying to be a dragon peacekeeper and fly around discovering all the new land they can reach now thanks to their dragons.

However when an EVIL Viking named Drago (Djimon Hounsou) starts forming a dragon army, Hiccup is caught between two worlds. His responsibilities to Berk and his responsibilities to protect the dragons and he has to decide whether to walk in the footsteps of his proud warrior father or in the footsteps of his long lost mother as a dragon peacekeeper.

Now this is exactly the type of story that a sequel should bring up. Instead of rehashing the original, How To Train Your Dragon 2 grows up and plays with a more mature struggle for Hiccup and what makes the conflict more believable is that it is rooted in his primary character flaw, his lack of confidence in himself. Everything in this movie seems to have grown up, and in a very believable way especially with the characters’ designs. Harnessing more subtle aging tricks rather than having the actors change their voices for each character to make them more “mature.”

Although taking a much more mature tone under its belt, How To Train Your Dragon 2 also expands on its more mystical element the Dragons. Primarily focusing on expanding on the hierarchy of dragons and the various training techniques developed by the movie’s three major dragon trainers; Hiccup, Hiccup’s mother Valka (Cate Blanchett), and the EVIL villain Drago. But before we get into the adults, let’s talk about Toothless and Hiccup. The two are still a fantastic duo, playing off each other beautifully and showing plenty of personality and chemistry. The movie pulls this off so well it helps create one of the movie’s crowning achievements of dramatic storytelling.

The moment when Drago pits Hiccup and Toothless against each other. These two have been so close throughout these movies and you got to like them, so it makes the scene almost disturbing to see the two pitted against each other which I’m all for. Creating such an uncomfortable scene creates an unsure atmosphere and mixed that unsure feeling with the current intrigue of the story and characters and you got a hook that will keep dragging people back for years to come.

Speaking of relationships, we had father and son last time so now we have the conflict of a long separated family coming back together. I wasn’t sure how Dreamworks would pull this off, hoping we weren’t going to go the big teary eye reunion route but to my relief the reunion is played more softly, focusing on the subtle body language and limited dialogue, WITH the exception of a song and dance sequence that I felt was 70% out of place and completely silly. Although the family conflict was well done, because of how they hammered it in it created the side effect of making the resulting twist almost hilariously obvious. Now spoiler here but I want to make this point so it’s necessary, so SOMEBODY dies in this movie, and Toothless is the perpetrator and that is a brilliant twist only marred by the predictability of the setup. While contemplating my thoughts on the movie I did come up with a slight fix that would’ve made the scene more powerful. At the moment before the death, whether it be bad timing or a twist of fate but what I propose could of happened is having both of the likely death candidates caught in Toothless’s attack and nearly die. That way their is an air of a misdirect giving you hope that one survives but in truth the other is stone cold dead.

Moving from a less grim subject, like the first movie How to Train Your Dragon 2 has beautiful animation. From the forceful and action packed action scenes to the majestic and free flowing flying Dreamworks motion with animation hasn’t lost its touched and it still top quality. Although I haven’t seen it in 3D but with the great detail and camera it should be a treat.

But now it’s time for the worst part of the movie for last, our villain Drago. On the surface Drago should be a perfect villain for Hiccup, training dragons through fear and intimidation and treating them as weapons, the complete opposite of Hiccup’s beliefs concerning dragons. Yes. Drago could’ve been a really awesome, intimidating villain but instead we get a complete one-note, contrived, and blisteringly stupid moron of a villain. It all stems form his root problem, his plan makes zero sense in context with his motives. Dragons destroyed everything and everyone I ever loved so I shall use dragons to enslave people. His motives and actions just don’t correlate. For Drago to have worked his hatred of dragons should’ve been scraped completely and instead replaced with the same intrigue that Hiccup and Valka hold.

Have Drago believe that dragons are the greatest and most powerful, and have him despise humans for being so weak and trying to kill them. His plan could be to enslave humans to protect dragons and that’s why he needs the dragon army so he can accomplish that. Like Valka if Drago went native with the dragons on one level we could have a very sinister mirror for hiccup to look at seeing what his affection for dragons could turn into if all his peacekeeping focus was all on bettering dragons and on another level Drago would be more sympathetic. From his point of view he would be doing the right thing and that dichotomy of moral guidelines and his cruel nature would make him more three dimensional. Unfortunately that’s not what we got, he’s a great villain in concept but his execution was garbage.

Overall, I am still debating with myself whether this was better or worst then the first. Although the first was more centered on Berk and the initial discovery of the dragon mythos, the sequel expands on the world and the mythos making it feel more vast and epic. Although the sequel did have a great triangle of conflict when Hiccup's family was brought together, the original's conflict of father and son felt more deep and impactful. And although I love both movies, they still have the weakest villains; big dragon in the first and Dragon in the second. As I've pondered which was better I kept coming back to a single comparison. Portal and Portal 2. Both games are excellent in their own way. Portal being a really funny puzzle game and Portal 2 being a really fun story with a puzzle game connecting everything. It boils down to apples or oranges if you like a more focused narrative and conflict then the original How To Train Your Dragon is for you but if you love a more expansive and epic movie then definitely check out How To Train Your Dragon 2.